Month: August 2007

Free to play Sci-Fi and Fantasy MMORPGsFree to play Sci-Fi and Fantasy MMORPGs

I just ran across an interesting post about free to play MMORPGs. These are on about the same level of retail pay to play games. The game model for these includes ways to purchase items or other things with money, but you can still play for free. One that caught my eye was Space Cowboy Online, which would give me a chance to use my Saitek x52 joystick and throttle. Archlord also looks pretty good as a fantasy style game. Check out the full post here.

Second Foundation by Isaac AsimovSecond Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Second Foundation book cover

Second Foundation is broken up into two stories, just like Foundation and Empire. The first story, Search by the Mule, takes up only about 1/3 of the book. It takes place 5 years after the events of Foundation and Empire. The second story, Search by the Foundation, takes place about 60 years later. The second story is significantly better than the first. When comparing the two, Search by the Mule seems rushed and not very interesting, while Search by the Foundation is more developed, especially when it comes to characters, plot, and action. (more…)

Foundation and Empire by Isaac AsimovFoundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov

Foundation and Empire book cover

Foundation and Empire is broken up into two longer stories, rather than five shorter ones that appeared in Foundation. The first story, The General, begins almost 200 years after the Foundation was established on Terminus. The second story, The Mule, takes place just over 300 years into the Foundation Era. I think I liked this book more because the stories were longer and the character development was a bit deeper. Also, it seemed that the action picked up noticeably compared to the last book. (more…)

Star Wars Galaxies 2003-2005Star Wars Galaxies 2003-2005

I figured that I should add a review for Star Wars Galaxies because I played for two and a half years. I can’t really remember when SWG was announced, but as soon as it was I signed up for the beta. I didn’t get invited until Beta 3, but I was still thrilled. A major thing that set SWG apart from other MMORPGs was the ability to dabble in different professions, or even surrender skills to start a new template fresh without starting a new character. Also, there was the fact that we could build our ships with custom parts and battle against each other in space. Unfortunately, the space portion was not finished by release and was later released as the expansion Jump to Lightspeed. (more…)

Comments enabled, RSS liveComments enabled, RSS live

Comments are enabled – I’ve enabled user registration (it takes just 30 seconds), so please register if you have the time. WordPress usernames are case sensitive, so keep that in mind when creating accounts and logging in. I look forward to seeing comments, however you don’t need to create an account to post a comment.

Also, I think I’m pretty much done fiddling with the site layout. I’m probably going to play around with the logo a bit and add a few more things to the right sidebar. I’ve also registered with Technorati and Feedburner to distribute RSS feeds.

Foundation by Isaac AsimovFoundation by Isaac Asimov

Foundation book cover

It is hard to write a review about one of the most famous science fiction novels of all time, but I will try to do it justice. Asimov originally started the Foundation saga as a series of short stories for Astounding Magazine back in the 1940s. For the novelisation Asimov added the section “The Psychohistorians” to precede the original 4 stories that were published in the magazine. For those reading along with me in chronological order, most of this first story is covered in Foundation and Chaos. (more…)

Blog formatBlog format

I have been unsatisfied with my site layout since I launched the domain back in 2006. It was rather simple, but having all of my reviews on one page is getting rather cumbersome. Rather than cut and paste my reviews into unique files I figured that moving to a blog format might be the best move. This will also give me the opportunity to post about things unrelated to what I am currently reading. I’m hoping I can organize things better this way and possibly go back and work on some short story reviews also.

I haven’t yet enabled user comments, but I will as soon as I finish minor tweaking to my template.